“Will you give up?” asked Vestasian, softly.
He looked up queerly and then gave a sharp cry, half sob, half sigh. “Oh, God! God! I would if only I could. But it neither goes nor stays, even like this ghastly flame that haunts me always.”
“I think,” he went on in the curious voice of one half sleeping, “that if that light were gone I should be better; it never shines as clearly as when the work has gone. At other times it flickers round the cell like some pale torch upon a funeral bier.”
“Here is the altar,” said Vestasian, suddenly moving to it. “Can you make no use of this?”
“It is an unnecessary table for which I find no use,” he answered testily, “except sometimes to hold my tools. I do not understand it.”
Vestasian went to the door and I followed him out.
In the passage he smiled.
“What do you think of them, Genius?” he questioned.
“I think they are poor misguided wretches.”
“Do you think we treat them cruelly?”